Melancholy reigns
This past Friday, Taylor Swift dropped her new album The Tortured Poets Department, prompting many Swifties to spend the weekend listening in a dark room filled with emotional angst.
Minnesota Twins fans could be forgiven for taking a similar approach after dropping this afternoon’s tilt—and thus the series—to the Detroit Tigers.
Coming into the game, a key narrative was Twins starter Louie Varland’s inability to put away batters with two-strike counts. Louie solved that problem today by making sure seemingly no Tigers batsmen garnered two strikes. In other words: Varland (2.2 IP, 4 ER, 3 H, 4 BB) was extremely wild and ineffective.
Detroit immediately (1st inning) put two runs up on the board, which were then closely followed (3rd inning) by a two-run homer from likely future Presidential candidate Buddy Kennedy. What this early lead felt like? Check out the comment of the game below.
Meanwhile, it was an all-too-familiar feeling for the Twins offense (or lack thereof).
In the first inning, the Twins loaded the bases with one out—and a goose egg remained in the line score upon frame’s end. Then, to really typify how things are going at the plate, Byron Buxton (of all people) hit into a ground-ball double play to end the third. After that? Multiple innings of scattered baserunners easily erased.
Though some clean work was seen from the Twins bullpen—Sands & Bowman fine in middle-inning mop-up—both Jay Jackson & Caleb Thielbar allowed further scoring late.
Other than a potentially-notable achievement in the ninth (see: Studs), it was ultimately another in a growing line of punchless losses. Your final: Detroit Tigers 6, Minnesota Twins 1.
Studs
- Austin Martin: Blasting his first career home run off Alex Faedo. Hopefully the kick-off to a long career in a Twins uniform for one of the products of the Jose Berrios trade.
Duds
- Louie Varland: Looking more and more like a reliever every outing.
- Literally every Twins hitter not Austin Martin. The seven hits and four walks weren’t horrible—but again there was nothing-doing when those runners were actually traversing the dirt.
Comment of the Game
- norff had this one pegged right from the get-go.